The International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance and its possible role in ISWAT

The IHDEA was formed as a result of the first International Heliophysics Data Environment (IHDE) meeting held at the European Space and Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Madrid, Spain, on October 17-18, 2018. Meeting attendees representing NASA, ESA, JAXA, and CNES have all agreed that increasing collaboration and coordination through the use of standard formats (for both data and metadata) and community-based data tools are critical for enabling interoperability of data systems and services while improving sharing of space-based, ground-based, and model-based heliophysics data sets. The newly created International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance (IHDEA) is a collaborative organization whose goal is to guide the development of a data environment in which the international heliophysics and space weather research community can seamlessly find, access, and use all electronically accessible, heliophysics relevant data sets. The specific mission of the IHDEA is to facilitate global access to, and exchange of, high quality scientific data products managed across international boundaries. This will be achieved by adhering to, and promote the use of, a set of governing data standards, data exchange protocols, visualization and data analysis tools. The role of the IHDEA is to serve as the focal point to engage the heliophysics data centres and the scientific community, foster communication, and identify the standards and services that will best serve the heliophysics and space weather science needs. Practical examples will be provided, illustrating the mutual interest to foster collaboration between key heliophysics data providers. How IHDEA could support ISWAT information architecture will be discussed and in particular how IHDEA could facilitate information sharing and interconnection between ISWAT teams and Clusters.